<<< BACK

By Shanon Kelley
Photos by Ray Lego

Three years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil–a remote region of the rock n’ roll universe–six kids congealed to form the nucleus of CSS (aka Cansei de Ser Sexy, or Tired of Being Sexy). Suddenly the band exploded, expanding from local basements and backyards out in all directions, to stadiums as far away as Budapest and Sydney. It was a titanic and chaotic struggle (although you’d never know it given their current contentment). Eventually their ever-warming reception grew acclimated to band’s core, and they merged with the ether of massive crowds at huge festivals like Glastonbury and Lollapalooza. Coming off a tour with Gwen Stefani and with their sophomore album Donkey already receiving rave reviews, the band seems set on a course to expand ad infinitum. While their triumph seems as natural and inevitable as the force of gravity itself, the band was hanging on by a thread just a year ago. Welcome to the world of CSS.
     I first came across CSS at the 2007 Coachella Festival. Hailing from Sao Paulo, Brazil, they were already enjoying popularity in the States due to the warm reception of their self-titled Sub Pop debut. Still, they were just getting their feet wet on the festival circuit—a band eager to prove themselves to fans and contemporaries. (In particular, they were asking everyone they met about a new singer they had fallen in love with named Amy Winehouse.)
    Throughout the festival, I peered into the lifestyle of a nascent, critically-acclaimed band: A pool party at their house with Tilly and the Wall partying alongside Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes; a photo-op with Paris Hilton after she watched their ironic performance of “Meeting Paris Hilton”; Leadsinger Lovefoxxx and Simon Taylor of the Klaxons nuzzling backstage (the two had only just started dating); hanging out at their trailer with Peaches, Le Tigre’s JD Samson and Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste. I had realized that CSS were the rare band that checked their ego at the entrance, filling the role of both adoring fans—don’t even get them started on how much the love Tilly—and heralded band.

But as the band’s popularity exploded throughout the year, I couldn’t help but notice their optimistic and animated demeanor devolving into something else. They seemed as confident as ever in their band and in themselves, but stress and exhaustion had obviously taken a toll. By the time they played New York City for the second time that fall, Lovefoxxx hardly left her hotel room. And during the band’s performance she dedicated a song to “all the people hanging out in our dressing room that we didn’t know.”
    What followed next for CSS was right out of an episode of Behind The Music. They had a horrendous split with their manager. As a result, the band had to tour non-stop simply to make ends meet. For all their alleged success—the sold-out shows, the NME covers, the opening spot on Gwen Stefani’s European tour—they were, to put it bluntly, broke and pissed off.
    It wasn’t until they started to write and record their sophomore album, Donkey, that the band became whole again. (You remember a wildly popular iPod commercial, too.) But the final piece of the puzzle fell into place after the departure of bassist and founding member, Ira Trevisan—a mutual and positive decision on both sides. Finally, things started getting back on track.

When I sat down with CSS at NYC’s SoHo House, located in the posh meatpacking district, the band was glowing. Adriano Cintra, Luiza Sa, Carol Parra, Ana Rezende and Luisa “Lovefoxxx” Matsushita are collectively cute as a button, completing each other’s sentences and openly complimenting one another. They are visibly happier and more content than they have ever been as a band, and, as you’ll read, they just can’t seem to shut up about it.

You guys started as an underground band in Sao Paolo and now you’re in Apple commercials. Do you miss anything about that earlier point in your career?
Lovefoxxx: It was a fun time but I don’t miss anything about it.
Ana Rezende: We couldn’t do that for three years.
Lovefoxxx: It was a mess, no money, no order…
Adriano Cintra: And everyone had day jobs, for us back then it was just—
Luiza Sa: —a hobby!
Cintra: A hobby yeah, and now it’s become our main activity!
Lovefoxxx: When I see all these new bands in England, it’s like they form one day and then one week later they have a lawyer, an accountant and a manger.
Rezende: And a cover before they have any songs! It’s so weird.
Lovefoxxx: Right! And a cover on NME. I don’t know; it’s different for us because we’re obviously from Brazil and not England, but it seemed like it happened fast for us, too, because we weren’t prepared for any kind of success. We weren’t expecting it.
Cintra: People are always asking us “Are you scared about the next album?” and of course we’re not! For us, it’s so natural that we’re a band and we’re supposed to have the second album, the third album, the fourth album, and it goes on.
Rezende: We have another vision because we come from Sao Paolo. Things happened so differently for us than from any other band that we know.
Sa: Also we’re not like, Ohhhh, we’re in an Apple commercial!
Rezende: We never even saw it!
Lovefoxxx: Each time something’s happened I thought it was the highest we could get. When we first got signed to the Brazilian label I said, “Nothing more can happen.”
Sa: We weren’t expecting anything! So when it comes we’re thankful.
Parra: Also, we work so much so that we don’t really know that we’re getting bigger.


Let’s talk about what a hard working band CSS is. Are you guys getting sick of the non-stop touring?
Parra: We got sick of it, but now things have changed so much that we’re very excited to tour again.
Cintra: It’s a new beginning. The new album is arriving with a lot of changes. I don’t play the drums any more which makes me so happy. We have a proper session drummer who’s amazing. The band is much tighter. I didn’t play the drums very well. It was fun at first to be this kind of DIY drummer, but now that we have a proper one and I play the bass the band is so different. We can all feel the change.
Rezende: We also got really sick of touring because we were playing the same album for three years. I mean the album came out in Brazil in 2005. But then we took a break— we’re not doing as many shows, but we’re doing more promo tours. In July we’ll start up again. We’re ready to start fresh.
Lovefoxxx: We’ve also learned that we can’t travel all day and then play later that night.
Parra: We definitely learned things the hard way.
Sa: Everything that was bad we’re now avoiding. We’re getting proper sleep, proper food—a good amount of shows with a good amount of rest. We were touring for so long and we’ve learned so much. Now it’s incredibly organized and it’s so much nicer.
Rezende: I think we’re definitely becoming professionals, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like a job because it’s a nice thing to do. Play in a band—it’s fun!
Sa: And also this trip right now is so easy. Everything’s easy and mellow. Nobody’s stressed out. It used to be really stressful to come here.
Cintra: This is the first time we’re staying in New York in a nice hotel, where the curtain isn’t closed with gum.
Lovefoxxx: Last time I was here the curtain was closed by gum, and it wasn’t mine!
Cintra: The most disgusting thing was that she still used it to close the curtains.
Lovefoxxx: It was quite handy! [Laughter.]

Tell me about some of the changes with the band. What led to Ira’s departure?
Rezende: Oh sure. Ira left because—
Cintra: —she has a passion for fashion! [Laughter.] No it’s true! Ira came to us and said, “You know I’m getting old, and I’m afraid that if I go for two more years with you guys I won’t be able to get back into my old career, which is what I really like to do.” And she told us this before the album was even completed. So we knew for a long time, and it wasn’t too stressful.
Rezende: It was good timing, very good timing.
Parra: When we were about to release the first album in Brazil she was already unsure.
Cintra: She had a career!
Rezende: It was something that we were expecting. It was natural. And it’s great now because Adriano is a really good bass player. It feels really fresh now.
Cintra: Plus she got into the really amazing post-graduate school in Paris and she’s really happy.
Rezende: We’re all happy

Let’s talk about the new album. I’ve listened to “Rat Is Dead”—it’s definitely a change from the first album. Tell me about the new direction.
Cintra: Well I don’t think it’s that different. For example, when we play “Off The Hook” live it’s a really loud, rock track. “Rat Is Dead” represents that rock side of CSS. The album itself is a very guitar-focused album, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t pop elements to it. I tried to make the record sound like the way we play live. I didn’t want to go crazy on the production and reinvent songs just to have to reinvent them again in order to play them live. We didn’t have that much time to produce it anyway, but we had most of the songs written. I’ve been writing new material since 2006, so when we decided to stop and make the album I already had a bunch of songs ready to put lyrics to. We had two months to record the album.
Rezende: We recorded four tracks back in November, and then the rest we did between January and March.
Cintra: We didn’t have much time at all that because in between [recording] we toured in England and Australia. It’s not like we stopped for three months to record.
Rezende: We never stop!
Lovefoxxx: Usually bands stop for a year to record.
Rezende: Hopefully we’ll do that for the next one. It was nice though and definitely a new beginning.
Parra: Yeah, it was perfect timing. Thinking about going on tour for the same album again was miserable. Then just thinking about all the festivals… [Collected grumble amongst CSS.]

Do you guys play the same set list then?
Rezende: Oh no—I mean the timing is different for each show, too. Our own shows we play for over an hour, but festivals are forty-five-minute sets.
Cintra: We have a lot of songs that we have to choose from, but we can’t just stop playing the old songs. People always want to hear “Let’s Make Love” and “Music (Is My Hot Sex).” We just played three shows for British MTV, though. We played half new songs and half old and it was really nice, the reaction we got. It’s exciting that people like the new songs.

I’ve noticed in the foreign press that they’ve asked if you’re scared to release your sophomore album?
Cintra: Yea! Can you believe that?

Because that’s a very common UK phenomenon, where a band puts out an album, becomes larger than life, then disappears.
Sa: America is definitely the opposite.
Rezende: Yeah, bands here build up to that.
Cintra: But that’s why I think we’re so different from the British bands. We were a band that played in my backyard, then we played the small clubs, then we played a festival, then we made a record. We were talking regular steps. So am I scared for the second album? No, I’m really excited!
Lovefoxxx: People from England are crazy because of the NME culture. There are so many bands in the spotlight and when you listen to them, they’re shit. Then you go to see them and they’re just playing their first show. There’s nothing that amazing that deserves to have so much of a media focus. 
Rezende: I’m really confident about the new album. For the first one, Sub Pop wanted to release our album and they believed in us, but otherwise people just saw us as a small band from Brazil. No one thought that we would do anything amazing. Sub Pop just thought that it would be a really nice album to put out. They’re not really focused on selling albums, they just release albums of artists that they like and believe in. It wasn’t really planned, in other words, it just happened. So, because it already happened for us unintentionally, we have a proper plan and structure for this release. Last album there was nothing.
Cintra: Our singles release made everyone crazy. They didn’t plan anything.
Rezende: Yeah because it was all unexpected for everyone. We only did two tours in America but were never really big here. But then we started getting really big in the UK. After that it was Europe and then suddenly we were doing well in Japan. It was a complete shock to us.

So did you have all of this in mind as you were writing songs for the new album, Donkey? Were you intentionally trying to write singles?
All: Noooooo.
Cintra: I write the stuff, and I’m very autistic.

Artistic, you mean?
Cintra: No, it’s like I have autism. And having gone through what we went through last year it was the only thing that helped me get through it: writing songs and making music. We didn’t have money to eat, we were dealing with terrible situations, and so the music kept me going. In the end it gave us a lot of options for what we were going to record.
Rezende: And I think that that’s why there are people from record labels whose job it is to decide which will be the singles. It’s really difficult for us to decide.
Lovefoxxx: In our heads we all have our favorites.
Sa: And those change! It’s definitely good to have someone else do that for us. The fans will pick the hits anyway.

You guys just seem really happy right now. With so many members and variables, it’s incredible you don’t fight more.
Rezende: We’re so good! I think all the rough things that we went through last year really brought us together. We were already a group of friends before we started and now we’re at a really good place in our band’s career.

So are you all relocating?
Rezende: We just did now. We’re all in London but Luiza’s in New York, the black sheep! [Laughter.] That’s another thing that’s making us really happy. All the shit we went through last year left—none of us could afford to have our own places. We had to live in our hotel rooms and out of suitcases. And they weren’t even nice hotel rooms! So it was very hard for us. But now it’s so different. After this trip we can actually go home. We never had that before.
Sa: It’s so great to be working and then take the subway and go home! It’s something that everyone has, but we didn’t.
Rezende: I remember when we were playing Glastonbury last year and it was so muddy. Everyone there loves it and has so much fun getting completely covered in mud but we were really unhappy. We were like, Fuck we don’t get it, what’s so awesome about this? Then some guy who, I can’t remember, he was either a journalist or someone from the label, asked, “Why are you upset?” And I said, “Listen I’m getting my pants all dirty and I don’t have any place to do laundry so I’m stuck like this for a month.” It’s really cool that this year we’ll be going to Glastonbury and then straight home to wash our clothes afterwards.
Cintra: And what about taking a decent shower? [Sigh.] I don’t even like to remember those times.
Sa: It’s fun for a weekend.
Parra: But not two years!
Rezende: We’re not the type of band that likes to sleep on floors either. We like our comforts.
Sa: We’re not rock & roll junkies.
Parra: We don’t use drugs.
Rezende: If we want to get drunk we’ll get drunk, but only with really good drinks. [Laughter.]
Sa: But we weren’t born this way. We’re not snobby, we’ve been through a lot and built up to this.
Cintra: It’s an acquired taste.
Rezende: We’re not really rich or anything, we just work really hard. We’re only starting to have apartments now, for example. 
Sa: We just like nice stuff!
Rezende: That’s why it was so crazy to be where we were at before.
Lovefoxxx: I wasn’t even able to go to the doctor in London. It’s very expensive.
Cintra: And when you’re thirsty you need to buy a bottle of water. And I just couldn’t. [Laughter.]
Rezende: That was so crazy. We’re all just so glad to be over that point in our lives. We’re so happy and excited.
Sa: We can buy water!
Cintra: Perrier!
Sa: Before we never even had time to think about those sorts of things. Now we do.
Rezende: We think about everything when we do interviews.
Cintra: Interviews are our therapy time.